Jackson Hole Ironman

JH Ironman Background: During my senior year of college, I completed my first triathlon. I still vividly remember standing in the staging area, feeling an unexpected surge of envy toward an older gentleman wearing an Ironman finisher race kit. I had no idea how long it took him to complete the race or where he placed. None of that mattered. He had finished. That alone felt like the ultimate flex, and it was working. I wanted to be him. At that point in my athletic journey, a 10K was my comfort zone. The idea of stringing together a marathon, 112 miles on a bike, and a 2.4-mile swim felt borderline torturous. His accomplishment seemed impossibly distant, yet deeply admirable. He wore that shirt like it carried a story, and it did. Who could blame him? Finishing an Ironman is a tremendous achievement. I remember quietly thinking that if I ever earned the right to wear that shirt, I might never take it off.

That moment planted a seed, though it took another eight years of incremental progress before the idea of standing on an Ironman start line felt remotely reasonable. I credit much of that shift to the Jackson Hole lifestyle. Living here has a way of breeding confidence. You begin in awe of the Tetons from the valley floor, and over time, you inch closer. First, a hike to Amphitheater Lake. Then a non-technical climb up the Middle Teton. Eventually, with equal parts fear and resolve, you find yourself standing on the summit of the Grand Teton. Each step carries its own anxiety and reward, yet there is always another challenge waiting. That’s the quiet magic of this place. It teaches you to believe in yourself. You see a challenge, you meet it, and then you look ahead to the next one. Over and over again, the cycle continues.

Living in Jackson does come with its downsides. One of the more obvious ones is that the cost of living tends to leave the wallet a little thin. The entry fee for the Ironman in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho — the closest race to me at the time — was around $450. For a ski bum in Jackson, that felt like a steep price to pay for voluntarily suffering all day. I tried not to let the number deter me, but I couldn’t quite justify traveling a fair distance, spending a lot of money, and enduring a massive physical ordeal just to earn a T-shirt and, maybe, a modest bump in status.

That’s when it clicked. The Ironman logo splashed across my chest wasn’t actually what I cared about. What I was after was the feeling that comes from covering that distance — the quiet satisfaction of seeing something hard through to the end. Once I let go of the symbol, the solution became obvious. Instead of paying for an Ironman, I would create one of my own, starting right out the back door.

At that point in my life, I hadn’t designed an adventure of this scale on my own, so my choice of venues was admittedly a bit uninspired. In hindsight, I wish I’d selected three locations with a little more pizzazz, but I was new to the game and only just beginning what would become a decades-long habit of creating slightly wacky personal adventures. My limited imagination was also paired with a very practical concern: I had no interest in spending a few hundred dollars on a wetsuit just to swim in one of the frigid alpine lakes around Jackson. That narrowed my options considerably. In the end, I completed the 2.4-mile swim in the local rec center pool. Not exactly an open-water epic, but it felt like a comfortable way to dip my toes into the shallow end of a much bigger endeavor.

I’m not someone who typically trains for objectives, but I had never swam that distance before, so I logged a few long pool sessions simply to make sure I didn’t accidentally drown. Once I got going, things flowed surprisingly well. Swimming has a meditative quality, and the distance passed more quickly than I expected. A big part of the appeal of a traditional Ironman is the camaraderie — being surrounded by others chasing the same goal. But there’s also something uniquely powerful about tackling an objective alone. The main benefit is simple: you’re never slower than anyone else, because there is no one else. I also appreciated how it forced me to keep going even though no one knew what I was doing. I’ve grown to enjoy race environments, but for these kinds of self-designed adventures, my real aim is mental expansion. And that tends to happen faster when I’m by myself.

Next up was the bike ride, which I completed on an ancient mountain bike I had previously ridden across the country right after graduating college. My logic was simple: if it could survive 20 states, it could survive 112 miles. I was broke at the time, and my budget didn’t allow for upgrades. I might have swapped out the studded tires for something more road-friendly, but given that my total race budget hovered around twenty dollars, that seems optimistic. Undeterred by the bike’s limitations, I rolled out of downtown Jackson and headed 65 miles south toward Thayne, Wyoming, my turnaround point. That stretch of the day is largely unmemorable, aside from my sit bones loudly protesting the lack of preparation. Fueled by Pop-Tarts and Coca-Cola, I reached Thayne, turned around, and began the long ride back toward the final leg. The route through Hoback Canyon was beautiful, though I was far too preoccupied with the fear of mechanical failure to fully appreciate it.

Waiting for me at the end of the ride was my girlfriend, Lindsay Goldring, and my bright blue Ford Explorer Sport. I was genuinely happy to see both, though the temptation to call it a day and go grab a drink was strong. Instead, I laced up for the run: a planned out-and-back to Teton Village, entirely on pavement. Living in Jackson, I almost exclusively run trails, and my knees have long thanked me for that decision. Looking back, it’s baffling that I willingly chose to spend 26.1 miles pounding pavement. I think I wanted something flat and predictable, but I paid dearly for every step. Lindsay biked alongside me for part of the run, which helped keep me moving, but once she peeled off to pick up her dog, the remaining miles felt significantly heavier.

I remember feeling a vague sense of euphoria in the final miles, though it wasn’t joy so much as the relief you feel when a crying baby finally settles down. It’s strange to think that this day marked the beginning of my endurance athlete phase. I’m still not entirely sure what I liked about it, but I knew that I did. Objectives like this are odd in that way. No one can fully explain why they’re drawn to them. You can dress it up with language that sounds plausible or even poetic, but the reality is that this kind of effort doesn’t make much sense. You’re subjecting your body to something brutally demanding with no clear evolutionary benefit. No one is handing out food, shelter, or security at the finish line. If someone had asked why I did it, I might have joked about earning the right to wear a finisher’s shirt around town. But there was no shirt waiting for me. What was left, instead, was quieter and harder to name: the satisfaction of discovering that I could endure more than I thought, even when no one was watching and nothing tangible was promised in return.